Joshua Then and Now

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• 1985
• 1 hr 59 mins
• Comedy, Drama

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• Watchlist

Successful Montréal-based writer Joshua Shapiro, in middle age, is facing both professional and personal crises, which make him reflect on his unusual life bringing him to where he is today. That success belies having grown up in the working class Jewish district of the city with his multi-career father, Reuben Shapiro (with most of those careers veering into the realm of the illegal), and his mother, Esther Shapiro, whose penchant for performing, which she demonstrated much to the delight of Joshua's friends at his bar mitzvah, took her into her own highly "exposed" career. Wanting to go to Spain to cover the conflict there in his younger years, he initially went to London instead, where he met arguably two of who would be the most important people in his life. The first is writer Sidney Murdoch, the two who eventually came up with a money making scheme at that time which is now the cause for one of those crises. The other is who was named Pauline Fraser (née Hornby) at the time of their initial meeting, she and her husband Colin Fraser left wing activists, which belied her blood blood WASP upbringing in Canada, the daughter of a Canadian senator. Love at first sight for Joshua, he was able to steal Pauline away from Colin for her to become Mrs. Joshua Shapiro. Beyond Pauline wanting an identity of her own beyond being Mrs. Joshua Shapiro or being mother to their eventual children, Pauline being devoted to her irresponsible jet setting brother, Kevin Hornby, is the cause for another of those crises.